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Back in my parochial school, we sometimes told Bible jokes -
not in the presence of the nuns, of course, although they probably would have
enjoyed them as much as we did.
“Who is the most elastic man in history?” went a question that
took liberties with the Book of Genesis.
“Abraham. He tied his ass to a tree and walked up the
mountain.”
And we didn’t neglect the New Testament.
“Why shouldn’t Christians watch TV?” Because Jesus told his
disciples after a mystical experience, “Television to no man.” For the
Bible-challenged, the actual quote is, “Tell the vision to no man.”
After a few years of neglect, I just started re-reading the
Old Testament, now called by many “the Hebrew Bible.” Those Old Testament people
were getting mixed up in my mind – the Jacobs and Isaacs, Rebeccas and Ruths -
so I figured it was time to take another look
Irrecoverably Out-of-Touch?
I know. The Bible may seem boring and irrecoverably
out-of-touch. How could a book that’s 1,900 to 3,000 years old possibly be
relevant to my life? And even if it were interesting, who has the time, right?
I believe many people too easily dismiss the Bible. It
conjures up fundamentalists who look to the Bible to answer all their
questions, people who are anti-science and irrational. For some it signals
people who are politically and socially reactionary. In short, it’s not cool.
I’m finding it fascinating, however, even titillating. Some
parts of Genesis read like a soap opera with wives providing their servant
girls to their husbands and fathers offering their daughters to strangers to
protect male guests. It reflects life at the time, of course, a time when such
practices weren’t that unusual but also when it was obvious to people that God
was an important part of life.
Ok, so it might be a tad interesting, but is it reliable?
Yes, and no. If you mean reliable in the sense that all is
literally true, that the world was created by God in six days, that there is a
“firmament” above that God separated from the waters below, that we are all
descendants of a single pair of humans called Adam and Eve, that Methuselah
lived 969 years… Well, you get the point. In that sense, many events and
“facts” in the Bible are unreliable.
But most scholars and religious leaders – including the
leaders of my own Catholic Church – agree that the Bible is a mix of fact and
fiction with a religious message that is completely reliable.
“All
Scripture is inspired by God,” says the Second Letter to Timothy in J.B.
Phillips translation of the Christian Bible, “and useful for teaching the faith
and correcting error, for resetting the direction of (people’s lives) and
training (them) in good living.”
People have come to understand the Bible much better because
of studies in disciplines such as archeology, philology, history and ancient
geography. They have provided an “Ahah!” moment for people who read the Bible. It’s
not a history book, after all, but the Word of God in the words of humans.
A
parallel can be drawn between the stories in the Bible and those we may hear in
our own families.
Tight with his Money
My great
grandfather, who emigrated from County Tyrone in Ireland, became a fairly
wealthy man as a farmer in northwest Iowa. But he was known to be tight with
his money. My father tells the story of his grandfather having rented a small
farm to his son and new wife. The sole source of water for the house and small number of
livestock on his son’s farm was an old windmill pump, the kind that used to be
seen on farms across the country.
The
story goes that someone came by the farm, sought out my great grandfather and
offered him $25 for the windmill atop the pump. He accepted the offer, leaving
his son and wife thereafter to pump water by hand.
The
story brought laughs and head shakes at family gatherings, but did it actually
happen, or happen that way? Who knows? That wasn’t the point. The story was strange
and entertaining and reinforced the fact that my great grandfather, for better
or worse, was a skinflint. Its historicity was irrelevant.
The
Bible is far from irrelevant for people searching for God. More a
library than a single book, it’s unbelievably complex, full of
contradictions and undecipherable material, and yes, much of it is hard to read
and hard to believe.
But
I don’t see how people seriously searching for God can ignore it, at least if
they’re searching for the God of Christians and Jews.
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